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watch these programs and more all weekend long. for a complete schedule, visit booktv.org. up next author and journalists rick atkinson. the military historian talk about world war ii, the iraq war, and the persian gulf war. he's -- authored six books including "an army at dawn" which received a pulitzer prize. rick atkin son, what is the lib rail trilogy? >> guest: a project i began fifteen years ago, it's an account of the liberal of europe particularly from the perspective of america and other western allies.

the first volume begins where the liberation began the innovation of morocco and algeria. the second volume is north across the mediterranean to the the the invasion of sicily. the third volume is the innovation of normandy. rome is fallen and d-day and normandy is june 6 within 19 44, it tells the final chapter of the story through d-day. >> host: why north africa? >> guest: that's when it begins. the decision was made to not the

army was green. the green commanders. we didn't have the landing craft in other material necessary to undertake that enormous feat. so roosevelt, contrary to the advice of almost of all of his senior military commanders agreed to invade north africa. it took place on november 8th, american and british forces not fighting the germans, they weren't there yet. it begins us with fighting the french. >> host: why do we begin by fighting the french in >>. >> guest: they made a deal with hitler and he made his way to paris. he made at french a deal with the devil. which was you keep the northern and you keep the southern and

the overseas possessions. particularly your colonies in north africa. and most of the french agreed to this. there were a few renegades like a few on secure bringing their charles, most agreed to it. subsequently when we invade north africa. it's the french still there. these are french possessions algeria is essentially a state of met metropolitan france. >> host: how long did it take to defeat the french? >> guest: three days. they would have fought hardly. one of the biggest navel battles is casa blanka. it happened that a senior french admiral was in al gear at the time his son had polio. he was at his bedside. he finds himself trapped by the invading force. he negotiates a deal with the

americans and the british and agrees he will surrender north africa which happens in the middle of november. >> host: rick, i want to -- you've got a recurring theme through all three of the book and through an army the war in north africa, you write the war in north africa is one of your books in the right that this army ranked 17th in the world in size and combat power justind romaa. conquer concealed just the homeland that was postponed that had not been tested in 20 years in the army lacked enough aircraft guns to protect even a single city. it is likened to the reconstruction of a dinosaur with three vertebrae.

then from your second in the trilogy, the day of battle, from beginning to end, it tended to be improvisational. finally, from the guns at last light, you write that the internal coherence of the allied coalition found a shirt victory. the better alliance had won. certainly it was possible to look at allied warmaking and feel heartfelt about the missed opportunity. you must wonder why they couldn't have been the least clever, sugar, and more intuitive. the allied way of war when all the way through. just to finish that up, an e-mail from jerry back in pennsylvania. at the bottom we have the soldiers who won the war. they are rewarded for their stoic demeanor transfer,

dysentery, fuel, food. they are slaughtered by the hundreds, often by the poor planning of their core army group commanders. thousands of these men were wasted for no good purpose. my question, he writes, how did we win the war? >> well, that is a complex question, as you might suspect. to try to simplify it, we won the war for a variety of advantages. we have far more of everything than the germans had, first of all. the material advantages were enormous. we were creating tens of thousands of the art and 10 airplanes. that is important. we are making in an america not only for ourselves and our armed forces but for our friends.

we were all sitting almost everything that the french used on our site. it is a substantial portion of what the soviets and others were supplied with. that is important. we learned how to fight. that is part of what the trilogy is about. we learned from the mistakes that were made beginning and north africa and italy, then there were more mistakes in western europe. there is a great sifting out the goes on. it is a sifting out the confident from the incompetent. all the way up to a army commander from the platoon levels. all the way from the physically fit to the physically unfit. the lucky from the unlucky. this is the trade that napoleon price. by the time we get to the summer of 1944, we are pretty good. we have a sizable army. when you put all of those things together and you remember that the soviets are hammering the third reich from the east, they

do most of their fighting, they do most of the bleeding, they do most of the killing, and they do most of the dying. 26 million soviets died in the war. it is very good ally to have in the soviet union. you put all of those things together and what you have is a winning coalition and a winning formula for global warfare. >> host: you write in your book, "the guns at last light: the war in western europe, 1944-1945", the statue weight of 144 pounds. the physical standards have been lowered that once kept many young men out of uniform. a man with 20 to 400 vision could be conscripted to fight. the armed forces would make 2.3 billion pairs of eyeglasses for the troops. where we shored on men? >> guest: terribly short.

initially to be drafted you had to have at least 12 of your natural 32 teeth. by 1944 was zero. the army had dropped her the army had drafted dentists. they were drafting 12,000 patients a month by 1944. how could they do that? penicillin. they were making it in huge quantities by 1944. all of this because precisely we were short of men this is an effort to build the ranks. 400,000 americans died, the 291,000 killed in action. the war falls heavy on the

infantrymen. we were in bad shape, the british were incurably bad shape. >> host: can you talk about the split between europe and america? how much europe have the resources and etc. >> guest: the american army put 89 divisions into the field. about two thirds are in europe. a little less than a third in the pacific. all six greens, they are in the pacific. most of the navy is in the pacific, including virtually all of the aircraft carriers and the bigger battleships and so on. when you look at it that way, you can see the weight between the pacific and it is pretty evenly this let. when you look in terms of manpower, the weight was given

to fighting the germans. this is because the decision had been made in earlier 1942. roosevelt and churchill and a senior commander believed that if you could pursue the strongest of the access powers first, then the others would fall from the tree like rotten fruit. it was the first and most important strategic principle that turned out to be true and that is why you see the weight placed on europe even though it is the japanese who had offended us most previously with pearl harbor. >> host: the year 1942. what was that like for the u.s.? >> guest: there was a better argument over where to attack first. when the decision was made that we were going to do this against the germans, for reasons that we discussed, this is a mission and

operation. it was the most great gamble of the war for the americans. it included secretly crossing the atlantic when the german submarine threat was at its latest. it is always one of the most difficult kinds of operations. it involves aligning ourselves with waging war in ways that we are not accustomed to. it involves leaving other men in the dark of night, which is what it is fundamentally about. all of this is a high wire act of the first order and that is what 1942 is about. >> host: what is it like on the

homefront? >> guest: after pearl harbor, all of the divisiveness over whether to get involved in the, whether to participate, including providing materials to the british and so on, all of that went away. by 1942 there is an anonymity of feeling about the strategic direction of the country. a feeling that we are in it with allies and there is a recognition that this is an existential war. our very way of life is at stake. and don't forget that in 1942, there were about 130 million people in the united states and 16.1 million of them will be in uniform by 1945 and everyone has someone they love in harms way. everyone has a stake in us.

that becomes quite clear to americans, almost all americans through the course of 1942. today we have about 2 million people in uniform, almost no one has someone they love in harms way. almost no one has this in the same sentence. so it is quite different psychologically between that period in world war ii and america today. >> host: from your book, "the guns at last light: the war in western europe, 1944-1945", proud briton soldier on. a bastion of civilization amid wars and dignity. he would not dare insult me, sir, with large crowds who sang along with gusto. london's west end cinema screen for whom the bell told starring gary cooper and ingrid bergman.

now in its third year at the duchess theatre. sunday, may 14, 1944, thousands pedal bicycles to the track to watch kingsway, galloped past the navy and then be gone. the royal geographical society sponsored a lecture with lakes and rivers. that is may of 1944. london. >> guest: the british have been at war since 1940. they have been under attack and they were soon to be under attack in a different way from day one it is quite deadly, flying bombs and it was part of the british landscape. all of a sudden there were a

couple of american soldiers showing up in a country the size of oregon. by good leadership, by good humor, they managed to show great forbearance in taking on this invasion by other allies and they contributed a lot to well-being. they contributed everything from housing to a little food they had. it is the beginning of the special relationship between the united states and britain. it hasn't developed quite yet on the battlefield, especially in high command area. even though there plenty of aggrieved people and there are millions of gis around. they can be crude and overbearing and noisy. the british show great character

throughout all of this. it is a part of this very long relationship. >> host: how did you do your research? >> guest: i am an archive rat. i spend cumulatively weeks and months and years in places like the national archives, college park, maryland, congress, the u.s. army, the history institute, british archives, it imperial war museums. throughout the better part of 15 years, i have gotten to know the archives very well. every gate university has a world war ii archive. i can get an enormous amount of stuff.

it can be very interesting and valuable. i do not interview many veterans. that is because my other is world war ii veteran. and yet, what happened 70 years ago is for everyone who is still alive on that time. it may or may not be reliable. it may not be as vivid as we remember. the contemporary is thousands of oral histories that were done almost simultaneously with the events that occurred and may have begun with army historians. it is so abroad that you don't need a recollection 70 years after in my judgment. i mostly use archives and contemporary archives.

to say the least, there have been a lot of books written. many hardcover titles, some of them are really good. to be diligent, to see what others have written a dodgier bread at the end of the war, enlisted in 1943, with went to officer candidate school. was a second lieutenant. i remember that their job was basically to keep order at a time when others had been utterly destroyed, 7 million dead germans, no food and power, it is horrible.

and so he was there for a year and went to college. went to penn state, then back into the army. and he had a very interesting role of europe right at the end. >> host: where did you grow up? >> guest: i was born in munich like most army brats. it was back when the u.s. army was still in austria. from there he was an infantry officer. georgia, idaho, sentences, hawaii. pennsylvania, we moved around on the bed. >> host: where did you go to college and what do you do prior to that?

>> guest: i went to the university of chicago and i wanted to be eight english professor. peter, after a while it just didn't seem like the right thing and i got a job after i finished my masters degree in the newspaper business. in pittsburg, kansas. i loved the newsroom, i loved being a journalist. i went to kansas city and work their for several years and ended up at "the washington post" in 1983, 30 years ago. i was a reporter and war correspondent. i did investigative reporting for the post. in 1956, for example, in the late '80s, i took on this

topic. and i left the newsroom very much for bed. i have been back to the post twice since taking this out. >> host: this is booktv. we are airing our "in depth" program, rick atkinson is our guest. here are his books, beginning in 1989, "the long gray line." the american journey of west point classmate story of 1966. then, "crusade: the untold story of the persian gulf war", and the beginning of "liberation trilogy." "an army at dawn: the war in north africa", in 2004 "in the company of soldiers: a chronicle of combat." it came out in 2004. and "the day of battle: the war in sicily and italy" came out in

2007. finally, just last month, "the guns at last light: the war in western europe, 1944-1945". if you would like to participate in a conversation this afternoon, the numbers are up on the screen. we have also set aside or third line this morning for world war ii veterans, giving mr. atkinson focused. we would like to hear from you as well. our number is 585, 2880. if you live in the mountains or pacific, give us a call. if you are a world war ii veteran, dial (202)585-3882. we believe that number out.

you can send it e-mailed to us at booktv.com. you will see right there, the top of the facebook page. the numbers are on the screen. at the top of our facebook is a common field for rick atkinson. so why the class of 1966? >> guest: my dad had a very close friend in the army who is in that class. his name was mike fuller. when in 1981, mike started telling me about his class and what they had gone through and how they had arrived at west point in 1962. then he charged off to vietnam in 1966 and 1967. thirty of them were killed in

vietnam. then they came home and found that they were pariahs within a generation. they were no longer the leaders, they were the outcasts as the country went through this upheaval over the war and many other things. and i went to the 15th reunion in 1981 at west point. everyone is crying, it was so heartbreaking and clear that this was a powerful story that allows you to tell a social history of america over it order sentry. i went back to their 20th reunion in 1986, that is when i began working on this book. i do feel that there were 579 men in a class, still all-male at that point. an extraordinary bunch, not only for what they went through in vietnam, but the things that happen to them subsequently.

the book is built around three central characters. i'm still very close to the men from that time. i've always think of them as 18-year-old boys showing up at west point. i feel a great sense of attachment. >> host: who are jack wheeler and can't walk hard reign. >> host: they are the two central characters at west point. both went to war. jack had gone to harvard business school. tom was wounded a couple of times. they went through various specifics. they found themselves on opposite sides of one of the most contentious issues. i was over how to honor the dead with the vietnam veterans memorial. he was the chairman of the

committee and tom was the most outspoken and articulate opponent. different camps were formed with respective points of view. they have since reconciled and jack was murdered a couple of years ago in delaware. no one knows what really happened. the two had reconciled. but it was interesting as part of the long gray line. it is part of this long journey this class has went to in 1962. >> host: from your book, "crusade: the untold story of the persian gulf war", first of all, did you in bed reign.

>> guest: there was no embedding. i got there right at the end of the war. i have been writing the main stories from washington. we got there in march and april, reporting for the post. trying to tell the story of what had happened from the inside area i spent a lot of time with the schwarzkopf's staff and the other generals and admirals who ran the war. those at home as well. those who have been involved in this way. the british and the israelis. they were aimed at israel. so that was my involvement. >> host: you write no american military decisions and the

vietnam war provoked more controversy and debate and more cost of commentary and the choice to offer a rock unmerciful 20. >> guest: the decision was made after 100 hours of ground war. iraqis have been evicted from kuwait. in august of 1991. they had been evicted from kuwait, they had been beat up with strategic air campaign, they had been eviscerated with parts of baghdad, and when they were on the run and being chased back across the euphrates river, the decision was made to end the war. that remains controversial to this day. again, in earnest, all of that

came out of the earlier war. >> host: here are the words. with conjunction with the other united nations, aimed at the heart of germany and the discussion of armed forces. what is that? >> that is the order that was given to dwight eisenhower was the supreme commander of the allied force. it comes from the combined chiefs of staff. the top generals and admirals and counterparts in britain. this is what you will do, you will invade the german armed forces and you are just set for german surrender. the decision had been made in january of 1943. the only way the war could end

was through complete surrender, unconditional surrender by the axis powers. this had happened and now the determination was it was going to happen with japan and germany. to batter them enough so that they would surrender unconditionally. >> host: what does this stand for? >> guest: it stands for nothing. it could stand for death, it could stand for it today, it is a code. people have tried retrospectively. >> host: about 69 years ago today. >> guest: that is right. that is the david eisenhower picked. it is very tricky to invade the

coast. the ties are extraordinary. it has to be right if you're going to go at night to be able to pursue this proficiently. the winds have to be right, or whether has to be right. the weather was wrong, as it turned out. eisenhower never had good luck with weather. it had been stormy for the invasion of morocco, it had been stormy for the invasion of sicily. and it was stormy, indeed. on june 5, 1944. it was awful. so he postponed it for a day. he had a narrow window and all the rest of it was still obtained in a way that was suitable for this kind of invasion. if you delete it much longer, the next appropriate time was going to be several weeks later. it was extraordinary anxiety.

there was 24 hours of morning. that was in some other point on the french coast. it could have been -- it probably would've been catastrophic. so the anxiety level is unbelievable. we make the decision to postpone it, he did, and they got away with it. june 6, that is the baby is celebrated the day. >> host: the number of troops? the numbers of deaths? >> guest: there were several. altogether you are talking about a couple hundred thousand troops going in on june 6. most of the deaths, one of the two american beaches was in omaha. several thousand deaths there. there had been concerned that

there were tens of thousands. and this was by no means light casualties. but they were left with utah beach. the british and canadians had a tough time of it. by the end of june 6, there were canadian troops as far as 6 miles inland. omaha beach, there were no farther than 1500 yards or there was a disparity between these allied invaders and what they found. and their ability to push inland. that is the trick in an invasion. you want to get as far as you can as quickly as you can. hopefully you want to push the artillery out of range so they can't show the beach. that is when you are most vulnerable coming across the beach. it took several days. nevertheless, it turns out to be

quite successful and the casualties, we are talking 3000 or so altogether, they are lighter than many had feared. >> host: what about the gliders and paratroopers that went in? >> guest: there had been a decision with this that you needed to have an airborne operation. and it is a big one. it includes men come in by parachute and those bike rider. off-line from england. the 181st and 182nd airborne division came in and said we have a british counterpart on the other side. all in all, despite confusion, catastrophe, planes shot down, men shot down, coming down with parachutes, all in all, the airborne operation had to be

successful. it did succeed with some of the defenders. it did help to shore up counter attacks in the beachhead and there had been a great debate a few days before the invasion. a british invasion, the germans had reinforced this part of the peninsula to a degree that would make it suicidal for these airborne divisions. he was a senior officer saying that this is suicidal. i think it was a terrible decision to make. it is very hard. he thought about for a long time and ultimately decided that i have to do it. i cannot launch an invasion and have the rest of counterattacks and the troops coming across the beaches without taking a huge

risk on these airborne operations. as it turned out, it was the right decision and it worked pretty well all in all. >> host: of more than 6000 jumpers from the 101st airborne, you write nearly 1000 had landed on or near the objectives on this tuesday morning. most enclosed the division drop zones would be killed or captured. with maps torn from local telephone books from french farmers. it lay beyond retrieval at the various areas of water meadows, various losses of radios and a circuit peering into a barn soundman lying in the straw, wrapped in bloody parachutes. >> guest: that gives you a sense of the intensity of it.

you had to be able to leap out of an airplane in the dark. from 1000 feet or less. jumping from 500 feet. with people shooting at you. the airborne troops had volunteers. even though you said you wanted to be there, you have to believe that when push came to shove, many of them had second thoughts about that. it is part of the reason that both are active divisions today. they are still revered. they draft these kind of troops and they go through this kind of experience. we go through this elsewhere in britain. they are extraordinary. my admiration for them is unbound. >> host: one more quote and then

we will take some calls. the preparatory bombings of the american beaches in operation overlord lasted barely half an hour to get on with the winnings. they fired 140,000 shells were the enemy emplacements were destroyed. almost 1006-inch rounds flown in only one direct hit was recorded. 111 guns, none were completely not out. rick atkinson is our guest. please call the numbers on your screen, we will begin with a call from robert in ohio. where are you calling from, robert remapped.

>> caller: in the guards to the general officers, how many general officers were in the military? >> guest: there were about 1300 generals in the army in world war ii. a number of animals i do not recall offhand. you can figure it is proportionate. today there are somewhere in the order of two less than 300. the ratio then and now is somewhat different. you can be that there were more soldiers per general, 8.1 million, 8.13 million in the united states army in world war ii. you have 1300 generals today. we have more generals today per soldier. i do not think it is necessarily

excessive. this is a debate that is held chronically in the pentagon among other places. certainly elsewhere in washington where there is too much brass. my feeling is that it is hard to make the case and there are too many generals. >> host: louise is calling from florida. you are on booktv, thank you for calling and. >> caller: thank you for writing about north africa. so few people have done it. i was with the 77th evacuation hospital affiliated with university of the university of kansas and we were overseas for 37 months. we did and what africa included two other hospitals that we work with behind the front lines. they do. >> host: what was your job? >> caller: i was a surgical

nurse. >> host: were you a volunteer? >> caller: yes. >> host: what do you recall about your experience? >> caller: it was totally unusual. it was so innocent about war when we went over there. we had to just work from scratch to set up hospital units and take care of the wounded. >> host: how many women were with your unit? >> caller: forty-seven, i believe. >> guest: thank you, louise. that was terrific. my wife is from kansas. my daughter is a surgeon. we are very enthusiastic about what you have done, the university of kansas, my wife is a graduate. i came across this periodically throughout my research.

you were there and there were no units that i'm aware of that did more for a longer period of time than the 77th. i am aware of the difficult circumstances, and field field medicine is very important. the ability to innovate, to stay tough and tough times, i am and not. my daughter, i have told her about what you and your colleagues did, and she is in on it as well. she works with surgeons at the university of cincinnati and trauma surgery. and she has some sense of what it is that you went through. >> host: were all women volunteers? >> guest: yes, they were. there was a woman's auxiliary

corps. and there was no draft of women. the men were subject to it. the deeper we got, the greater we had chances of being. but there was never a draft of women. so if you were a woman in an aircraft factory or a welder in a ship factory or the driver or something, it is because he volunteered to be here. >> host: from your book, "an army at dawn: the war in north africa", you write that at a price of 70,000 casualties, one thing has been redeemed. for u.s. divisions now had combat experience as expeditionary is. mountains, desert, and urban. combined arms, of mass armor,

they now knew what it was like to fight on. xu e-mails you and says, i intend to write about this. it is true, isn't it? that we must write to insist about the campaign in north africa. maybe the war would have been shorted. >> guest: this has been debated for seven years since then. my feeling is, having looked at it in great depth, over a longer period of time, it played out as a check. i do not believe that we have the capability to invade france in 1943. i think it would've been potentially disastrous. there were no good alternatives to north africa if you are trying to liberate europe ultimately. my feeling is that even though

there is a bit of improvisation involved, they are making it up as they go along. there is a miscalculation about how easy it will be in north africa. certainly miscalculations about what churchill called the soft underbelly, the second side of europe. there is nothing soft about it. you know, i think that you can argue that the war in italy went on too long and grew too much of our resources. but my feeling is that the decision to invade north africa is quite defensible. >> host: were the americans and british on the same page? >> guest: they were almost never on the same page. it is one of the mysteries of the war have different national perspectives and values and

interests can remain more or less in harness. he found, for example, just over the issue of where to invade initially, the british favorite north africa. none of the americans favored north africa. it was franklin roosevelt. so this sets the stage subsequently overlarge issues, strategic issues like this one. and other strategic issues. it is a tribute to men of good will to actually to be able to put aside differences and reach compromises. especially to make it work. certainly many bad feelings at times between these allies.

>> host: if you can't get through on the phone lines, you can send an e-mail to booktv on c-span.org, or you can make a comment on her facebook page. please go ahead. >> caller: you may have already addressed this question. it is about what you said about italy. he said that we were attacked with the germans if we nailed them and it was like the rest of them would be like this. why was the decision made to go into italy as opposed go into france? i have heard theories and another question i have, how well did the fbi administration handle the patents, if they were supposedly one of our top commanders. was in a kind of irresponsible and the war might've been finished early before that? supposedly he was one of the better generals and so on.

the last question i have is i had heard and i can't remember the book, it was actually on c-span. eisenhower and patton were some historians had argued that after world war i, their superiors train them specifically. so there is going to be another war and it was drafted as -- they were already in the service, as being the ones who are going to lead the invasions and so on. is there any truth to that? >> guest: the invasion was italy. italy has taken on partly because of a certain momentum. once you've committed yourself, there is a kind of logic being in the mediterranean. there was a general agreement is the campaign was unfolding. that ended in may of 1943.

the next obvious step was sicily. and you need bases for the air campaign to launch these enemies especially in germany. it makes sense. we invaded in july 10, 1943. it is only 43 miles and so the decision was made. we have gone this far, we will go into southern italy. there is a certain sense of that as well. it becomes a self fulfilling process. you get into southern italy in september of 1943. you want to get to rome, that happens right away. the italians quit in september of 1943.

so we end up in italy until the end of the war, until may of 1945. part of it was to try tie up german troops. part of it is because there is a momentum to it. the british are very keen on prosecuting. they have 200 years of experience there. they have imperial interest in the mediterranean. so you find that there is a momentum and logic of its own that occurs but does not necessarily hold up when you look at the second question is in august of 1943 in sicily, cotton really lost control of himself. both were sick and in hospitals and if that were to happen today, he would be captured from

the army. i think rightfully so. it did not happen to patton. he was pushed aside for a while, as he said. but this fact remained secret for several months. the story didn't break until november of 1943. it was not roosevelt intervened, it was roosevelt trying to decide what to do with the problem child. recognizing that he was, as you say, a fine field commander and he decided that it caused him problems as a senior american ground commander in normandy. he used it for deception reasons and he was sheltered aside for several months. he is miserable. miserable and in this time.

my feeling is that what happened was deserved. that he had brought it upon himself. i think that he chose a fairly wise course. i'm not sure that i understand the first question. >> were they specifically train after world war i? >> guest: well, no, they were not. eisenhower believed that it was inevitable and, in fact, they called him alarmist ike. but the army had been reduced to a skeleton of itself after world war i, they were not thinking that we will identify him that way, but we will be the senior general. he was a lieutenant colonel in 1939. he has something like 45 months. so there is not a desire to

cultivate these men were second world war. it happened in part because they proved themselves to be capable professionals. they stick with it between the wars. and they recognize the merits. but they have not specifically been designated in any way as the future leaders of armed forces in world war ii. >> host: we have a world war ii veteran in palm beach, florida. you're on with author rick atkinson on booktv. >> caller: is great to hear from you. i have been a fan of mr. rick atkinson for 30 years. i was a teenager in the infantry in world war ii. i have read two of your books. "the long gray line" and the one about africa. on the battle of hugh oshima, where i was, there were just three of us and on d-day there h

point on the ground, and the afternoon and day, third battalion was wiped out and the second battalion wiped out. we ended up taking it. also we need a writer like you to go after the service academy. that's a couple of things to think about, i love you both, we are wishing you guys are great day. >> guest: thank you, ken. thank you so much for the comment. you sound awfully great for a guy who is on a mission. i agree that the services generally, this is a juries

issue and some have been dashed some leadership had been a little cavalier. you can expect to attract very capable women, which is absolutely essential with the armed forces at this point. unless you respect them, airmen, sailors, marines marines, i am hopeful that the secretary chuck hagel has taken us on until the proper thing is done in this appropriate framing is done. it's important to remember that some have only been at the academy since 1976. relative newcomers with a lifespan. they are still trying to get it right, i think. with respect to the first question about iwo jima, it will won't be done by me.

i decided some time ago that i'm not going to do the specifics -- i'm going to leave world war ii. fifteen years is long enough. i have agreed with my publisher but i'm going to do a trilogy on the the american revolution. reading, trying to get smarter about a year. my intent is to take on the revolution, somewhat as i did with that. i am fascinated by the british and the germans, operational and strategic view and the characters that are just as fantastic, not only the ones that we know about like george washington and some that we probably don't know about. that is what i'm going to do and we will have to take on this. there have been books written on the word japan, on the pacific,

he is well into volume one. so the story on iwo jima is very important and needs to be looked at. >> host: can you discuss your writing process? this is a question from a individual who e-mailed us. >> guest: yes, i can. well, i think having been close to a newspaper for many years has been helpful. it is part of your discipline. you can type fast for one thing. you are accustomed to deadlines. we have to be accustomed to what to throw throw out, what we've been, how to to make judgments on the fly about that. i process is that you research. i go to archives, i do most of it myself. i do not have researchers and i

think has to go through my brain in some way for me to really understand it. and then i put a mark on the wall and i say, i'm stopping here. there are things that i don't know, things i never know. there will be more to write 500 years from now. at that point i outline the material that i have, i type it up, with more than a thousand for the book, and then i build a very large outline. i use the software and it is allowing me not only to have a map, but it is an index that tells me where everything is. when i finish the outline i write about a thousand words a day. and i can write pretty quickly.

that is about the equivalent for the story. so if you just think 250,000 it is only 250 a day for the washington post, a kansas city beat brenda if you throw yourself into that next thing you know you have a book. knowing when to stuff their research, knowing you have a deadline to turn in the van used coffee is pretty important to getting it done. the 19 david in new york. >> caller: first of all, i'd want to thank you for your great writing and your great books on world war ii. i want to ask you a question. you talk about the patent slapping. in your opinion did the care of battle fatigue improve? what was battle fatigue treatment like that as compared to today? >> guest: that is a great

question and important question. we learned a lot in world war i about what was called shellshocked and that term was discredited and other terms were adopted in world war ii but by the time our involvement in north africa began, much had been learned in an earlier war had been forgotten and they had to learn it again. it is like this with respect to narrow psychiatric issues, trench foot for example self learning in the north africa and they learn pretty quickly that treating it in various ways is more effective than others. one of the things most soldiers showing signs of combat fatigue show is exhaustion, combat exhaustion is another term for it. they would tend to not come out, sometimes letting and sleep for several days at a stretch. they would try not except in the

worst cases where a soldier had really coming. they would try not to ship them too far to the rear. they wanted to keep in close to their units, it helps preserve their self-respect, their links to their units of it is important to know there were 900,000 soldiers hospitalized for narrow psychiatric disorders in world war ii. it was an enormous toll. today, you have to say the treatment of p t s d is pretty sophisticated. we have learned a lot during the experience in world war ii and korea and vietnam. we didn't have the diagnosis after world war ii. it is clear there were hundreds of thousands, millions of soldiers who came home from war and suffered some experience of it in ways we would not recognize and yet it was not

diagnosed then. they are much better today at diagnosing it, you have terrific combat leaders like the first infantry division, the top american general in africa, i recognize i have got symptoms of ptsd, i need treatment. when the generals state that it allows the private and the sergeant and a lieutenant to come forward and say i also needed. it won't be the end of my career or my comrades's respect for me. we have come along way in that regard. >> host: you are watching the tv on c-span2 rick atkinson is our guest, the last of his trilogy "the guns at last light: the war in western europe, 1944-1945" came out last month that he writes, this is from august of 1944, the u.s. stock market tumbled in anticipation of peace

and falling corporate profits. >> this is after the success we finally had in normandy, the germans have bottle of the british and american and polish canadian soldiers for weeks and weeks after the june 6th invasion and finally at the end of july we launched an operation called cobra, punching all hole in the german defensive lines. american forces for through, george patton hopes to lead them, the british on the left side of the allied line breaks through, the germans have really no good place to defend until they get to the german border so we are pushing across france, we have them bottled up in a place between normandy and paris. a lot of them get away. we kill or capture 40,000 or so but many of them get away and yet there's a great feeling of

elation, jubilation, the germans are on the run so what you find at home, paris is liberated on august 25th, a belief that it is all over but the shouting, that the work is essentially done, the germans have been defeated, the next stop is berlin and people were making plans to celebrate victory in europe day in august or september of 1944 and it doesn't happen as quickly as anyone hoped on the allied side and the war is going to drag on until may. >> host: paris, august 1944, germans spoke in signs, sometimes replaced by resistance placards the warrant suppliers, collaborators were pelted with eggs and sacks of excrement, short women had swastikas painted on their breasts and

placards tongue around and next. and american sergeant barked at a mob leave her alone, you are all collaborationists. and is the resumed collaboration on a rest and purchase, some 900,000 french men and women would be a arrested in the purge of the 125,000 workforce to answer in court for their behavior during the occupation. in everett, washington, hike, ron. >> caller: thanks for taking my call, an honor to speak with you. turns out both of my questions have been answered so i would just like to say, deserves the same description the -- that president gave the normandy campaign, a mighty endeavor. a truly comprehensive, ribbing

and eloquent, grateful that you followed fdr's priority in addressing the european theater first but disappointed you didn't care your attention to the pacific theater where i had a father and two uncles in that theater as well as an uncle in the european theater, and one uncle who was in the new guinea campaign before macarthur got there. my question on the italian campaign, you did note, several of them, david kennedy from stanford, victims of the battalion campaign was the senseless strategical the sec and the side show. i tried to get further on fat, when rome was captured, subsequently they diverted a lot of divisions, the invasion of southern france, didn't that

more or less argue the campaign continuing in italy after that what the unnecessary? >> good question, thanks for your generous comments and for that good question. i think there's plausibility to what you say. there is some sense in capturing southern italy because there are good airfields' and if you want to hammer the germans with strategic bombers not only from england but flying out of the south from italy and heating oil fields and oil facilities and message plants and the rest of the cities than having those airfields makes sense. as i suggested earlier, the farther north you go the less sense it makes. part of the plan, strategic rationale for it is to tie up as many german division says you can and there are more than 20

german divisions including some good ones fighting in italy, knows where divisions that will not be facing you in normandy so i think there is justification with respect to that, you're absolutely right that after rome falls the decision has already been made that there will be an invasion of southern france. it happens on august 15th, 1944, it was supposed to initially be simultaneous with the normandy invasion but was delayed a couple months because of shortages of flying craft and so on and we pull our best units out of italy including the third infantry division, thirty-six division, 40 fifth division and the french pull all of their forces. the french in my estimation were as good as anybody for the allies in italy and had the best field commanders, but did all said we still have a country deliberate, i can't justify having four or more french divisions fighting in italy when

the opportunity to obtain steve their fight through normandy or come through southern france. so right now that is seven divisions and will be many more through southern france that pull out of italy. the british are bitterly opposed to it, churchill is beside himself, he is hysterical over the notion of the invasion of southern france. he believes if you're going to invade somewhere else, not just fight in italy but fight to the pull river valley and keep the pressure on the germans from their, you should invade through the head of the adriatic, he wants to go through place that is a way of getting toward vienna. eisenhower said i'm not going to any gap i can't pronouns. the americans basically put their foot down and they're the big boys on the block at this point and churchill has to accede to the demands of eisenhower and roosevelt as it

turns out that the southern france invasion will take place, that the forces in italy will be reduced, the fighting continues in italy until the beginning of may of 1945 partly in order to keep those german forces tied up and not allow them to reinforce the normandy front. >> host: december of 1944 from "the guns at last light: the war in western europe, 1944-1945" particularly alarming to g is was a cigarette shortage. u.s. army soldiers alone smoked more than a million packs a day in europe. million packs of cigarettes a day. >> and dwight eisenhower did more than his share. he is smoking four packs of cigarettes a day himself. the had to have it. cigarettes were included, he got several cigarettes in every ration pack it. you can take away their

ammunition but don't take away your cigarettes. there was a shortage, serious shortage, had more to do with shipping issues than actual physical shortage of cigarettes and the troops were riotous. this was a big problem for eisenhower. eisenhower one point switch brands to a lesser, a cheaper brand to show solidarity with soldiers instead of the camels he was usually smoking. hadden was a cigar smoker. he would smokes as many cigars as churchill, 20 cigars a day sometimes and and and give up the cigar's for a while to show solidarity with a long-suffering troops who had a tobacco shortage. it is part of the culture. you look back and think my god, what we doing to those guys, no wonder they were shorter bread climbing the hills in the mountains or fighting in december of 1944 but it was a different age and that was part

and parcel, an entitlement that g i expected. >> host: i defined the to the bison or smoking? >> guest: no. there are quite a few pictures of eisenhower with cigarette. >> host: nathaniel is a world war 2 veteran in huntsville, alabama, good afternoon. >> caller: thank you for taking my comment. i am a world war ii veteran, 86 years old and i am concerned about the people committing suicide from the battle. the lady came on but i wasn't able to talk to her so i was wondering if mr. atkinson could get this message what i'm going to say to her, that the reason i think a lot of soldiers are committing suicide is because of money, because a lot of them

when they get discharged, their parents may even be dead, they go into a city where they don't know anyone and they don't have -- so many of them are sleeping under bridges and things because they don't have anywhere to go, so if the army give what they gave us in world war ii, we have $300 -- i am not sure, it was so long ago. we also have 5220. for the first year we have $20 a week so that we could get adjusted, and living with my older brother, i gave him ten dollars for my rent and lived off of that other $10 a week. >> host: mr. atkinson is listening. where were you stationed in world war ii and what was your

experience? >> caller: los angeles, calif. was in eustace, france and also in germany for a short time. i was in the 337th engineers, a truck driver. my duty was to take feet and hes out to the airfield and was free to go to the red cross and play pingpong or whatever, until time to pick them up, then i would pick them up and taken back to camp. >> host: thanks for it calling in. >> guest: thanks for your service. suicides are alarming and there was a story about the statistics which are of great concern to anybody who cares about soldiers and the army and the relationship of the military to the republic, suicide rates in

the military have been less than the general population and all equal or greater than. soldiers when they leave the military do get certain benefits. many soldiers go in precisely for the education benefits they subsequently get a you can build up a pretty good nest egg but that doesn't necessarily deal with the psychic scars you may have. their were suicides among world war ii soldiers. not uncommon. >> guest: you have macro numbers? >> guest: there were 2 one thousand battle deaths, four hundred thousand total deaths of americans in world war ii and that difference between 291 or 200 include suicides and accidents and disease and sell on. the pentagon has taken it very seriously. there are efforts to counsel

soldiers as they get out, efforts to make commanders, noncommissioned officers more aware of suicidal symptoms and symptoms of depression and so on but you are absolutely right, you are taken out of that structured environment when you muster out and go off to school or looking for a job, not just the military that needs to worry about it. when you look at the aggregate numbers of unemployment among veterans and you see is higher than unemployment numbers total we in the country you know there is something wrong about the way we are dealing with veterans and trying to help veterans after they finish their service. >> host: december of 1944, eisenhower's provost marshal estimated in december 1, 8000, american deserters roamed the european theater, another 10,000 british and saunders. the equivalent of a division of military fugitives was believed

to be hiding in the parisian demimonde often joining forces with local black marketeers to peddle kate rations for $0.75 from the tailgates of stolen army trucks. hundreds of such vehicles vanished every day or simply selling the entire deuce and half for $5,000. >> there was a lot of bad behavior, no doubt about it. and i think it is important to recognize the notion that all the brothers and sisters were virtually -- it is nonsense, not how human nature works, whether you're in the army or out of the army. there were 23,000 deserters in the u.s. army in world war ii, thousands of courts martial for felonies, hundreds of thousands for lesser crimes, misdemeanors and this kind of miss behavior was quite common. there were race, 30 some soldiers executed usually for

murder and/or reddick in europe during world war ii, french villages especially in normandy that protested violent behavior of american soldiers and british. there were complaints to eisenhower from french generals that french women were afraid to go out at night without escort because they were being accosted. this is all part and parcel of war. what makes good soldiers do bad things, it makes bad soldiers did terrible things and i think to believe otherwise is not to understand what war does to the sole end this kind of behavior, some of it mischievous, some of that felonious is part of the story of world war ii. >> host: roger in california please go ahead. >> caller: i was first in the country in vietnam, psychology

of vitamins and survival. you are right on the money, is really true about what war does to soldiers. i wanted to ask you. i have read all three volumes, your work isn't just good, it is brilliant. you should get another pulitzer. but about montgomerie, at the command level there's enough egomaniac to go around. montgomery takes the cake. your descriptions of the political rigmarole that went on with him are impeccable. i had to laugh sometimes. a lot of the stuff you had. to comment on how you personally felt about montgomerie and have you ever thought about putting

your political x-ray eyes on to the vietnam war? >> guest: thank you for your kind comments. montgomerie is a piece of work, no doubt about it. your last question first. and to take a good look at vietnam, you can believe that now 40 years after the there are many veterans like roger still alive, documents that were classified for a long time that are now unclassified and at the time may be right for someone to take on vietnam. the best book out there is bright and shining line which came out in 1988. it won't be me. i picked a different war. i'm looking at the revolution. i can only do one at a time. pretty a trilogy on the revolutions and maybe vietnam. >> host: montgomery. >> guest: it is important to recognize i have a certain sympathy for him because he has

a very difficult childhood. the grows up in tasmania on the southern coast of australia, his father's vision of tasmania, has an awful mother, loveless, forever saying find out what bernard is doing and make him stop. then shipped to st. paul school in london to boarding school and he has to make his own way. there is an emotional fragility about him that plays out in montgomery's psyche as self absorption. what we see with montgomery is a guy who is very much involved with himself and has for social skills that recognizing how others see him. he just doesn't pick up the cues that you would hope. montgomerie is important to the british empire in the sense that

churchill's government is on the roads in north africa, it is not clear that the british army is going to survive in egypt in 1942, montgomery is said to take the army, he does when a signal victory, churchill thereafter is forever in his debt. churchill has no illusions about montgomery as a difficult character. a german general was captured in north africa, someone told churchill that he had been invited by montgomery to have lunch and churchill said i too have dined with montgomery. eisenhower has had to deal with this guy from north africa through sicily handedly until they both leave at the end of 1943 and prepare for the invasion of normandy. is a great trial by eisenhower's generalship anything greater trial of his skills as a

politician. this is why eisenhower is supreme commander. roosevelt says he is the best politician among the general's as part of being a politician is holding together a coalition against all the centrifugal forces that always pull -- try to pull apart. eisenhower and montgomery almost fall apart, fall away from each other to the extent that eisenhower has to have montgomerie relieved. and almost comes to that but does not. it is a tribute to eisenhower's that he is able to finesse this somehow. i must say he is great fun to write about. you could not invent him if you were a novelist. >> host: when is charles the dolls into this mix? >> guest: another prima donna and. franklin roosevelt detests him, thinks he is a tyrant in the

making. thinks he is not really a democrat meaning a small d democrat. and he does not want to acknowledge that charles they gaulle is in fact the legitimate head of free france. eisenhower sees that he has broad popular support among frenchmen, that he is really the only guy you can deal with, he sees he has a certain legitimacy and again charles the bald can be inseparable but eisenhower turns the other cheek and basically harnessing de gaulle and his forces to a common good. >> host: this is from "the guns at last light: the war in western europe, 1944-1945," nor was eisenhower much help, the supreme commander had proved and in different field marshal in

tunisia, on sicily and during the planning, now he continued in that deficiency, watching passively for more than a week without recognizing or rectifying the command shortcomings of is two chief lieutenants. >> guest: eisenhower is not a natural battle captain. he does not see the field spatially and temporarily the way great captains do like napoleon. he does not have the ability to dominate a battlefield but that is not his job. his job is not to be a field marshal. his job as he defines it is to be chairman of the board, that is the phrase he uses, chairman of the largest marshall enterprise on earth and his task is to hold together this coalition against all the centrifugal forces. his job is to provide the beans and bullets and bombs necessary to win the war. his job is to find the right men who can lead other men in the

dark of night, the right men who are the battlefield commanders that he needs and i think he is quite brilliant so i give credit where credit is due. i am willing to to call a spade a spade and say there are occasions including this pocket where he simply does not see what is happening on the battlefield, he does not intervene at the strait of messina and sicily, he doesn't see the germans and italians are going to get away. there are several occasions when he simply does not show the skills needed to qualify as a great capt. but that is okay. that is not his job. >> host: from the theodore roosevelt association, a tweet for you, we are in awe of ted roosevelt. what are your thoughts about his service? he is feeding your book.

>> host: >> guest: i enjoy writing about him. he is an extraordinary character. his father is the 26 president. young ted spends most of his adult life trying to live up to a father who is carved on mount rushmore. the volunteers for world war i, performance rather heroically, he is wounded in the war. between the wars he is very accomplished, one of the founders of the american legion, he publishes books with doubleday, chairman of american express, he is the governor general of the philippines, pr, he is an explorer, he is extraordinary and world war ii comes around and the volunteers to go back into uniform, he is in his 50s at this point. at utah beach, he has been to north africa and sicily, he has been relieved of command of the first division, assistant division commander, it breaks his heart but he is given a second chance, he comes back

with the fourth division, he is in the first wave, recognizes the landings are going badly, that the navigation has pushed them off course, he tells his men as the land under fire let's start the war from here. he never knows because he dies of a heart attack a little more than a month later in normandy in july of 1944, never knows he will be awarded the medal of honor for his heroics at utah beach and that he is going to get his own division, eisenhower just approved it. he is an extraordinary character to write about, like you guys, i appreciate him for what he is, of beautiful writing, his letters home to his wife his name is eleanor, fantastic. i hated to say goodbye to him when he dies in july of 1944.

>> host: halley in storm ville, n.y.. >> caller: it is kerri. hello, i have read two of your books, the first of the trilogy and i'm well into the third, enjoying some. i have two questions. the first is about lloyd free anddow, commander of the second quarter. the allies try to cut off the germans and they failed to do that in their rush from the invasion area. they were sort of in disarray, formed a defensive positions, they had to defend quite a long front. he launched his famous pass, a disaster, but he was replaced after that as commander of the second quarter, bradley

recommended his replacement. eisenhower had been pretty satisfied with him and said positive things about him up until then. my question, i guess is do you think he was just the fall guy, do you have any other insights? >> host: it took awhile for us and our recognize he was the wrong man for the job. when a commander has been sent to him by george marshall, the chief of staff who is not only eisenhower's superior but ten years old and eisenhower and eisenhower reveres him. when marshall and lesley, the chief of army ground forces sent him out as effectively the senior combat leader for the u.s. army eisenhower is going to take a while to recognize this guy is not up to snuff. there were suspicions,

eisenhower came to share them, that he may have been a physical powered. i don't know if that is true. i don't think the evidence is there to make that kind of really damning charge against him. there is ample evidence that he is not the guy to lead the second corps. when the offensive begins on february 14th, 1943, he is nearly paralyzed, he is 100 miles back from the front, he is taken very freshest engineering resources, they are digging a headquarters from the side of a quarry, the bottom of a quarry, when eisenhower sees this, he recognizes that friedman dollar is nowhere near the front, is showing signs of being afraid and showing a kind of lethargy so free and dollars relieved and sent home, given the third stock

and given command of the training army in the united states. it is the last time eisenhower will be sold benign treating someone who is relieved. >> host: if you are on hold we will get to your phone calls the stick with us for a few more minutes. rick at -- rick atkinson is author of six books, "the long gray line," his first, 1989, "crusade: the untold story of the persion gulf war," came out in '93, is then the beginning of the liberation trilogy, "an army at dawn: the war in north africa" in 2002, at the 11 about the iraq -- "in the company of soldiers: a chronicle of combat" about the iraq war, "the day of battle: the war in sicily" the second in the trilogy, the war in sicily -- is final volume in the trilogy "the guns at last

light: the war in western europe, 1944-1945" came out last month. in 2003 c-span covered rick atkinson talking about the importance of war correspondents. here is what he had to say. >> is a matter of keeping faith. that is what it comes down to for me. the issue has come up recently, i consider myself a recovering journalist. for 40 years i have not worked in a newsroom. i write books full time, i write books specifically about world war ii so i know a lot about war correspondents in world war ii and their motivations that the issue has come up again recently with the crisis of sorts in iraq and i found myself examining my own motivations and my own relationship to the military, my own relationship to journalism even as i consider myself a historian now. and decided some time a couple months ago that if push comes to

shove i want to be part of it. so why is that? i just turned 50. my knees don't bend as well as they used to. i am used to a comfortable life in washington, teaching kids. why do we did this? i find, i am hoping, planning to deploy with the 101 airborne, that it is really part of my obligation to those who serve and it is also part of my obligation to those here at home to try to tell the stories as completely and fairly as possible, to tell it as completely as you can in a way that honors the service of those who served without being co-op did by the military. there are not a whole lot of people who can do that.

i am trying to total line between being part of the institution of the military and representing even though no one elected us, the interests of the larger republic, falls on a fairly small group of people and in this case war correspondents and i think that is an important duty and important responsibility and i think it is incumbent on those who are capable of doing it who are willing to do it, who find and attractiveness about this kind of work to go ahead and do it when you can. ♪

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♪ >> host: "in depth" continues with rick atkinson. next caller's from russell in connecticut, russell is a veteran of world war ii. >> caller: hello. thank you for taking my call. i was commanding officer of the gun boat. >> host: got to turn down the volume on your tv. just listen to the phone. >> i was commanding officer of the gun but in the south pacific in world war ii and navigated for a transport squadron in the middle east north africa.

during korea. i have just finished manchester's third volume on churchill and i wondered what your reaction was to that book. >> guest: i have not read it yet. manchester died before he finished the third one and dino the third one has come out and been well received but i have not gotten around to reading it yet. i well, it is on my list. >> guest: >> host: the next call from died in colorado. you are on with rick atkinson. >> caller: a privilege to speak with you. i have red end enjoyed several of your books and really appreciate you. i also read with the old breed, famous for its first-person

account of the poor face buyout marine corps infantrymen fighting in the pacific and i was quite moved by it. my question is can you recommend a similar book written by an american soldier who fought in the european theater? thank you. >> host: i rely on first-person accounts, i use journalists more than most historians because i was one and therefore have some sympathy, but also paid, they would claim underpaid, professional observers and so i lean on them heavily, people that you know, like ernie pyle, people you don't know all probability like oscar white was an australian journalist, wrote about new guinea but was sent to cover the war in europe with

patton's third army and rose a really wonderful little book called conquers road so i have a list on the web site, liberationtrilogy.com of books that i recommend by historians, also first-person accounts. there is nothing quite like sledge's book that comes out of the european theater. there are some good personal accounts that have been written by soldiers at all levels and some pretty good memoirs. lose interest that is a general comment not at sledge's level but holds of pretty well. bradley wrote two memoirs, soldier's story and the general's story, nothing that quite has the resonance and grittiness of sledge's book. >> host: you mentioned ernie

powell. this is from "the day of battle: the war in sicily" writing about it we. i looked at it this way. if by having only a small army in italy we had been able to build up more powerful forces in england and by sacrificing a few thousand lives that winter we would save half a million lives in europe, if those things were true then it was best as it was. i wasn't sure they were true. i only knew i had to look at it that way but i couldn't bear to think of it at all. >> guest: it is incredibly poignant and that is part of his great power. you feel he was a guy who was bearing his soul in a way that is unique. i found i lived with ernie pyle for the better part of 15 years, my admiration for him only deepens. here is a guy from indiana this ends up in washington writing about aviation and things before the war and someone accidentally

becomes a war correspondent. he had written millions of words before the war began and he has a great knack of empathy and his sympathy is always with the grants, with the unlisted men, the infantrymen and he is often with them. he goes through lodge of unlike -- there are very few other correspondents who do it as intently or as long as ernie pyle does. use in his 40s. he is no spring chicken, is not a healthy man, he drinks too much, he ways may be 100 lbs. he is not robust character and here he is living this awful life with other infantrymen and they love him for it, they respect and admire him, he is a beautiful writer, he writes so much there is inevitably some junk, got to feed the bull dog every day that passes is like that are so eliminating and so

touching and vibrant that i find he leaves the european theater, he has had enough, he is in paris for the liberation of paris and doesn't enjoy it at all because he is so seared by everything he has seen and been through, he simply has lost the ability to enjoy life even in moments when he is participating in the liberation of paris. he says goodbye to omar bradley. everyone comments how bad he looks, he comes home, thinks he is through with the war and ends up in the pacific and the skills on a little island late in the war in 1945. for anyone who finds himself in hawaii, i lived there as a kid. i remember as an 11-year-old kid my father taking the to ernie pyle's grave. it is very moving even if you are 11 years old and for us to

remember the war we ought to remember ernie pyle. >> host: another close in "the guns at last light: the war in western europe, 1944-1945," going home to his wife, it is like if i hear the word again, i will it will be too soon. >> soldiers get on his nerves, profanity is one of the things, he was not a man who didn't occasionally -- use a four letter word himself but anyone who has been around soldiers a lot as i have, the intensity of that culture especially if you are older, a generation older as he was, it can cost you a sense of grievance and this outcry,

really tired of being around these guys but i am stuck with them for the rest of the war. >> host: if you are world war ii better and would like to talk with rick atkinson about his trilogy 202-385-382. next call from martha in belgrade lakes, maine. high. >> caller: thanks for wonderful three hours, and honored to talk to with this 2 flags history. i have become ensconced in my history reading and this summer i am reading bunker hill. i still can't believe it's washington during the french and indian war ended up working with general gage, when general washington was appointed for the american revolutionary war here

he is in boston, washington going into boston and general gage is retreating to go to new york fed for -- i am just amazed that all of this. >> host: did you have a question or just make that comment? >> caller: at wanted to ask about the soldiers who are hesitant to fire the first shot. apparently at lexington there was this hesitancy that makes me think of for sumter in the civil war. nobody wants to fire the first shot. >> guest: there are plenty of shots fired in world war ii. there was a book published after the war that estimated a substantial number of soldiers in combat never fired any shots. as many as -- can't remember the figure precisely but roughly 25%

simply didn't fire their weapons because they were too frightened or powered somehow or didn't have the opportunity, couldn't see the enemy. that is a different kind of thing that you are talking about but in world war ii there's never a reluctance for the first shot to be fired once the war is well underway. i can't comment about lexington. i am not reader of lexington but not a historian. >> host: tony is in san diego. >> caller: i enjoyed "the long gray line" so much inspired me to military technique. with that being said, i've would like to make a comment about the gentleman who fought at iwo jima said about the service academy, i just feel venetia is not doing a good job covering the story. i went to the academy, we sat

through hundreds of hours of sexual prevention. you know the rules about that place. we couldn't sit on the same horizontal piece of furniture. we are talking about environment so controlled and so rigid i just don't know what part of the academy can do. the media is so eager to jump on this and say the economy is fostering an environment of sexual abuse it just doesn't ring true with many of my experiences at the academy. >> guest: thanks for your call. it is not true for the overwhelming share of cadets and midshipmen. in the washington post today there is a story by -- about a mother of a female midshipman who alleges she was raped by three other midshipmen and it is appalling. once is too often. not to say that it is rampant,

not to say most cadets, most soldiers, most midshipmen, most sailors don't recognize the right thing to do and wouldn't intervene given the opportunity to stop this sort of behavior. it may be the rigid controls a place like west point are part of the problem in the long run. certainly the class of 1966 for example, it is all male, it is a hothouse environment that doesn't really allow young 19 or 20-year-old men to have what most of the rest of us would consider normal interactions with female students and the attitudes many cadets have, distorted from that era.

this is a different era, there have been women since the class of 1980 at the academy and the academy and culture of the academy has changed a lot about race and gender and so on and i would never argue and i don't think anybody would argue this is preponderant, this bad behavior. it is just incumbent on the nation to deal with this. the twenty-first century is a different place when it comes to the role of women in our culture including our institutional, places like the military academies. >> host: from bill riley's had an unanswered question about the d-day invasion, there was plenty of free invasion intelligence covering all aspects of normandy so i am perplexed the allies were so unprepared, for what

hindered their advance and increase their casualties. any insights on this? >> guest: it is perplexing. part of the issue is so much attention is paid to getting across the ages. we see this in the earlier innovations in north africana and sicily, the ball game is just to get a foothold, consequently there is short shrift given to what comes next. in the case of normandy, yes. i write about how there were studies that recognized normandy, particularly the american part of the invasion sector had this topographical oddity, the hedgerows were built over the centuries by farmers clearing fields and pushing rocks and debris into walls essentially and from those walls grow vines and trees and

virtually impenetrable. those were in south pacific and guadalcanal, reminded of the jungle of the south pacific. even though there was knowledge of this kind of terrain that they were going to encounter there was not sufficient thinking by those who should have been thinking about how we are going to get through it and how this will complicate our lives, how there was a nasty place to fight. omar bradley for example said that he was vaguely aware of it but couldn't begin to imagine how bad was going to be. that was the failure of bradley's intelligence and imagination. he should have been aware of it. there were studies that were presented to omar bradley and other senior commanders saying this is going to be unlike anything you have seen before. these aren't english hedges that are neatly clipped and easily penetrated by tanks. these are fortresses

essentially, to figure out exactly how we're going to deal with it is how we're going to think months before the invasion. it didn't happen and it required a series of improvisations by american soldiers to come up with ways of blasting through fees hedgerows in away that allowed them to fight on. >> host: here is a quote from a german general from the day of battle, ever cheeky for a man who lost the battle and the war would observe in september of 1945 that it anglo-american commanders, quote, appeared bound to their fixed plans, opportunities to strike at my flanks were overlooked or disregarded although german divisions of the highest finding quality retired down in italy at a time they were urgently needed in the french postal areas. >> guest: he wrote this in jail

and he was in jail for years because -- i admire him, he is one of the finest german field commanders but he is cheeky. it takes real hot spot to offer that critique of a guy who has slashed you badly, captured u.s. and imprisoned you. there's a point he is making which is opportunities are mist and german generals sometimes perplexed by lack of imagination, lack of boldness of allied generals said there is something to that. the point is this. there has been an argument for 70 years that when a german, italian president fought an american president the germans were tactically superior. so what? this is really not what global war is about, not technical competence at the small unit level. it is about a clash of systems. which system can produce men and

women capable of producing the logistics', transportation, material support, which system can produce the commanders that can affect victory on the battlefield? which system can design, build, transport and detonate an atomic bomb? the germans couldn't muster the wherewithal to cross the english channel which at its narrowest is 21 miles wide to invade england in 1940. the american armed forces are projecting power to the pacific, the atlantic, the mediterranean, seven sees, and liz heavens. that notion of tactical superiority by the germans is beside the point. >> host: where they committed nazis or army men? >> guest: they not sees not in the sense of being party members

hundred the sway of the cure and certainly willi from nazi ideology dallas concentrated from a jewish family. kesselri kesselringdid not step in to stop the deportation of jews from italy or north africa. for german generals to claim as so many did after the war, many of the survivors claimed they were simple soldiers following orders, they were not part of the nazi ideology as though the rest segregated, this is false. they were very much part of the death machine of the third reich. that is why people like host: you are watching booktv

and c-span2, rick atkinson is our guest on our "in depth" program. hugh is a that in california. >> caller: thank you forvet in . >> caller: thank you for your book. my question is could barely sustained brutality in world war ii, growing the been the 30s i did not see regarding the civil war level of world war i and i wondered from your perspective as a journalist and historian what factors you attribute to the sustained interest. >> guest: thanks for your question. it comes in cycles. there was an interest in the civil war, resurgent interest in the 1890s, certainly we saw a resurgent interest with the ken burns series, there's no shortage of history's coming got

about lincoln and the civil war and so on. i think waves of it come along. in the case of world war ii, 70 years more or less after the fact, a i believe what we are seeing now of the 16.1 million who are in uniform about 1.3 million american veterans are still alive and they are dying at a rate of 800 day. next year 2014, the number will be 1 million for the first time, ten years later in 2020 for the number will be below 100,000 so that generation as generations zoo is slipping away. they are passing over. we are finding children, grandchildren, even great grandchildren who are keen to understand what their fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers did in part because it is part of their heritage, part of the patrimony and part of understanding who we are, where we came from.

world war ii in prince us in very profound ways to the stake, in prince the way we think about gender. we have been talking about it at the military academy, the way we think about race, the way we think about our role in the world's. we will never be isolationist again before -- the way we were before 1941. all of this derived from world war ii and people are interested in that just as they are interested in their own personal family histories. that helps to feet this ongoing fascination with it. finally it is the greatest catastrophe in human history. sixty million did. it is hard not to watch a train wreck. is hard to look away when you see something as grotesque really as world war ii was on that scale and there's also a feeling that we are on the side of the angels. there is good and evil and you can differentiate between the

two more easily than you often can in contemporary life and contemporary conflict. there is no doubt that we were on the side of good and the forces of liberation even though many bad things happened as we discussed and that has an indoor rink appeal also. >> host: this e-mail from dick konrad in washington. in your view how much did the strategic bombing campaign by the british and americans contribute to the defeat of nazi germany and what was the casualty rate? something you write about in "the guns at last light: the war in western europe, 1944-1945". >> guest: thank you, dick. thanks for the good question. the strategic air campaign is absolutely invaluable. these are large bombers flown by the british and americans primarily and flying over german cities or german factories or

other strategic targets. there was a bitter dispute over precisely how this should be carried out. the british flew mostly at night and believe the bombing cities was most effective in trying to whittle away german morales, to have the germans essentially implode. the americans flew mostly by jay. the americans believed hitting certain strategic targets, particularly oil starting in the spring of 1944, that oil was the achilles heel of the german war machine and that proved to be true. it is absolutely vital and understanding how the ground forces are able to eventually prevail, to know that these air forces have for years by the time we get to 1945 and are in germany been hammering all of this panoply of targets.

the casualties were staggering. the odds of surviving and fulfilling your quota which kept going up initially was 25 missions you had to fly. the yards of fulfilling those 35 missions and going home became pretty dire and you have found there were few professions within the profession of arms as dangerous as being a crewman on a b-17 for example. it was extremely hazardous flight against german fighter planes and german batteries. >> host: jack is living in louisiana. you are on booktv with author rick atkinson. >> caller: misquoted you. i am not a veteran of that warm but i wanted to pay tribute if i

could to some dear friends of mine who have done now whose names go down in history. but they were very -- my engineer was one of the 80 second and 1 hundred first paratroopers that were at normandy and i will never forget the tears in his eyes when he said the nation was to take the guns, i lost 100 of my friends, and they were not even there and he went from there to market garden where he was not more lehman did because he lived through it, seriously wounded and taken the last bridge and then he went and fog, what a hero and my uncle who was in manhattan's army throughout the campaign and removed through it and loved his general but said this of the soldier who was slapped, he said we had a

serious problem with people shooting themselves in the flute and he was incensed about it and that is why he slapped the demand. he loved his general. he said a lot of our boys died but not because we weren't fighting. >> host: we got to leave your comments there. appreciate your calling in. this e-mail from anna in atlanta, i am looking forward to hearing you speak in atlanta. in 1944-45 i was a child of 8 in northern italy. my family had moved to a small village to get away from the bombings. often always at night we were visited either by partisans looking for food of which we had very little or by the fascists who were looking for the partisans. at these times be the kids, she writes, were always shuffled away in the bed room out of sight but we still could hear everything and were scared.

my question is how effected of was the role of the resistance in the war. >> guest: talking specifically about italy. every occupied country had its own flavor of resistance. particularly in italy it is not until you get into northern italy in the last year of the war from summer of 1944 to may of 45 that the party becomes a vulnerable force. they harassed the german occupiers, they blow up a train tracks and bridges, they ambushed patrols, they became pretty vulnerable land they were aided by the forerunner of the cia and the british counterparts so they play a role. it is not a decisive role because there are not enough of them ended is very hazardous.

the germans are absolutely ruthless. if you are a partisan or suspected partisan you are likely to be summarily executed. in france it is a bigger network. again, it is only the last year of the war where they claim a role because prior to is that there was simply very little partisan activities that really put a dent in the germans and again you had to be incredibly brave to participate in the french resistance because the germans would go through and execute everyone in the village of the partisans were active in that area. again it is not a decisive. is important to acknowledge them and recognize that they play a role in southern france, especially american agents, soldiers who would parachute in, british also, rendezvous with french resistance units and help in various ways, instruct them

in explosives and so on. it is not what decided the battle for france but it is an important part of keeping pressure on the germans and keeping them uneasy and making some sleet very lightly at night. >> host: jeff me, hot springs village, arkansas, e-mail, first question, why, in your opinion, didn't eisenhower and bradley better heed the warning signs that led to the battle of the bulge, and secondly, what do you think of ike's decision to let the russians take berlin? >> guest: the first one, the warning signs were fairly opaque. it is easy to say in retrospect you could see the germans were at masking along the border in belgium, at the time there was of believe the germans had been so thoroughly battered in the flight across france that they lack the wherewithal to put

together this kind of offensive that took place december 16th. there was also an overreliance on ultra, the british ability to intercept and the crypt the most secret german radio traffic, military radio traffic, if you didn't hear it, there's a belief it had in happened. all of the planning in the battle of the bulge, was done face-to-face. by written message and there were not messages transmitted by radio that could be intercepted and decoded and consequently there was not recognition that a huge preparation was under way. in retrospect you can say it was unpardonable they had no clue this was coming. and intelligence order, failure of the first magnitude, there were reasons for it. why didn't you take berlin?

he intended to. that was in the plan for normandy. eisenhower reaffirmed in befall of 1944 the ambition of the western allies was to go to berlin and he changed his mind in march of 1945 in part because the russians were virtually on the doorstep of berlin. a mask several million troops that were going to fall on berlin, western allies were still 200 miles from berlin, and decisions that were made in germany in general and berlin specifically with divided up after the war. they would be petitioned with zones for the russians, the british, the americans, not only for the french but the same would happen for berlin and

eisenhower came to believe and was encouraged by roosevelt to avoid conflict with the russians. came to believe it was pointunless to risk tens of thousands of casualties racing to berlin when the russians were already virtually inside city limits of berlin so he changed his mind and directed his armies towards dresden and the southeast in order to cut germany in half. in retrospect i think it was entirely the right decision. the british were not happy with it. churchill in particular believed there should have been an effort to push to berlin but 70 years later that decision holds up really well. >> host: who is walking piper speaking of the battle of the bulge? >> guest: piper was an s s soldier, lt. colonel, he was the

point of the spirit in the attacks began on december 16th, 1944. his task was to lead an armored column through the american defenses and get to the news river and help capture bridges and then they were going to proceed on to and work, huge, important belgian port. piper who is quite sophisticated spoke english, spoke french, had two brothers who had been killed in the war, very intelligent, utterly ruthless. will we find with piper's column they are finding difficulties right from the get go on december 16th, a timetable is disruptive, things are moving slower than they are supposed to be moving. he comes near the village in belgium, and american unit travelling by truck, his forces happened to fall on this unit,

they shoot up the convoy. american soldiers who survived the initial encounter are taken into a field, lined up and massacred. there are more than 80 of them shot to death. others get away. word of the massacre gets around very quickly. it begins a cycle of reprisal. there are no prisoners to be taken, orders given by some american units. piper never makes it, he gets close but not quite, he doesn't have the combat power and is running out of fuel. he manages with very few of his original force of 1500 or something. to get back. he is tried for war crimes after the war, sentenced to death along with scores of others involved in killings near normandy. it was attainted procedure. confessions that had been

extracted from the defendants were considered to be under judicial review to be improper so the death sentence was lifted. the life sentence eventually was commuted. served ten years in prison and then he was let out of prison. he became a salesman for the motor co. portia and later volkswagen. he was in charge of american sales. he was murdered in nearly 70s and had a house in eastern france, the house, it was arson, piper's burned body was found, the case was never solved. it remains unsolved. there were very few tears shed for him. >> host: after the war he sold cars to americans and had a house in france. david tweets in to you do we tend to overvalue our contribution to the allied

effort to defeat nazi germany and undervalued the role of the u.s.s.r.? >> guest: that is the point and i make the point whenever i can that the soviets did most of the killing, bleeding, dying for the alliance. they had twenty-six million died during the war, and vegetable for us. and i think there is a tendency frequently to overlook the soviet contribution. world war ii immediately turns into a cold war and the soviets become our adversaries and there is little profit in acknowledging the soviet role when their adversaries during the cold war but 70 years after the fact it should be recognized by every american that if it were not for the russians the war would certainly not have been won as quickly as it was and for every russian soldier that died that was one american soldier that didn't have to die. >> host: steve in california,

hi, steve. >> caller: i. i am into the third book. i read the other two. they are great books. thank you for writing them. my question on december 16th was just answered so i am going to go off on to your crusade book and ask about the pressure, the political pressure in the u.s. congress to stop the war after 100 hours in iraq. how big an affect was that? i remember the time very vividly and listening to nancy pelosi rant about continuing the war was that a factor in the ending of it? >> guest: i don't think it was. i don't think congress had anything to do with it. the decision was made really in the pentagon. it was made specifically by

colin powell, obviously with the concurrence of his civilian masters. he called general schwarzkopf and said we are at the 100 our market. we kicked them out of kuwait and done what the united nations asked us to do and fulfilled the terms of the congressional and united nations authorizations. what do you think about ending it? he was concerned there may be a backlash. the television photos in particular would be seen of carnage on the so-called highway of death leading out of kuwait city. none of those photos had yet been on television when he made the decision but he was aware there was carnage and there would be photos. i don't think nancy pelosi or anyone else had a thing to do

with it. >> host: thomas, world war ii veteran, on with author rick atkinson. >> caller: thank you for putting in this book on. we are excited, very profound. it was my privilege to go to the normandy cemeteries, the american cemetery inside the beaches of normandy and a one time with the next-door neighbor, a congressional medal of honor winner, there are two congressional medal of honor winners in the cemetery, one being general theodore roosevelt jr. and those comments and those two, just wanted to point out the only two there and they're

great sites are easy to find with the markings on white crosses. >> guest: thank you for that. >> host: what was your service in world war ii? >> caller: i was both in the marines and on of transport in the pacific but we got our fair share of land. >> guest: thanks for the question. >> host: we had some callers calling in about rape and sexual assault in the military. in "the guns at last light: the war in western europe, 1944-1945" you write about this little bit. you have got some figures i want to share with some viewers. 443 death penalties were imposed on g is most for murder and rape and disproportionate number fell on black soldiers, often after

dubious due process. 70 executions took place in europe including several public hangings. >> host: yes. and one execution for desertion. a private who i write about at some length. i think you find in general that the racism that was prevalent in many institutions in the united states in the 1940s some could be found in the armed forces and disproportionate punishment that was meted out to american black soldiers was something that reflected prejudice toward them and lack of councils that they often did not receive, it extends all the way to the death

penalty. i don't remember the number of black american soldiers who were among those 70 but was disproportionate. >> host: a little more. the german military issued 50,000 military death sentences in world war ii with half or more carried out, 21,000 soldiers would desert from the u.s. army during the war, less than half had been caught by the late 1940s. do we have any idea where some of the deserters are? >> guest: i don't know where they are. paris in particular was a haven for guys on the lamb or dies with shady business. i just mentioned and the slovak, a kid from detroit who was drafted, had the virtue of writing to his wife every day while he was in the service and

ended up being sent to the twentieth infantry division, deserted immediately. was hanging out with a canadian unit for a while and finally caught, court-martials, he refused the offer basically to have his sentence set aside if he would go back into combat. he said i will just desserts again this his appeal came to eisenhower in december of 1944 at the darkest time of the battle of the bulge and eisenhower was not in a forgiving mood and unfortunately for slovak eisenhower of firm the death sentence and eisenhower also said that his unit, twentieth division was to carry out the execution so i described how he is transported by military police to the twentieth division, firing squad

was set up, he believed to the end he was going to be -- that the sentence would be commuted and it was not. they shot him dead. the division commander had been at omaha beach, at one of the worst of all the battles in world war ii, he had been in the battle of the bulge with the 20 eighth division, shot to pieces conlan and there were 15 minutes of his life, those 15 minutes during the execution, left a hollow feeling in the hearts of everyone who witnessed it or participated in any way. >> host: change for the story of 601 hardest people, kansas city, missouri. he was a draftee in the 1960s. what is your turn to? >> guest: he is referring to the

end of the book. i found a document, 400 pages written right after the war and it describes the operations of the quartermaster effects bureau and the effects bureau was set up at 601 in kansas city to handle the affects of the american dead. began in january of 1942, the first months of the war as a small operation, fewer than a dozen people. and grew to more than a thousand people working in this converted warehouse. handrail boxcars pull up on the side of the warehouse, and the effects of the dead on six continents' hoisted by elevator up to the tenth floor and by

assembly line conveyor belt where inspectors all along the line will go through the affects, take out pornography, ammunition, letters from a girlfriend who didn't want the winner to see, others things that were inappropriate for one reason or another and all the effects would then be packed conlan as this was happening in a large room adjacent to the assembly line, they were banging out letters, 70,000 letters a month by 1945. dear sir or madam we have your dead son's stuff, where should we send it? it is an extraordinary scene, the inspectors found all kinds of things, tobacco sack full of diamonds, an italian accordion, shrunken head, all the things that soldiers can and do

accumulate. they also found many diaries, thousands of diaries and those were collected and i quote from the diary of one young lieutenant killed in new guinea at the end and the gist of what he has written in the diary is a last letter home because he is wounded, dying, takes him a couple days to die in this shanty in the jungle in new guinea and it is a letter, my dearest sweet father, mother and sister, what he writes his i can understand why god is taking my life if he wants to, why he is making me suffer. that is the gist of the questions so many have to ask about world war ii, the suffering of war, that is what 601 harnessed the avenue is about. >> host: smithfield, virginia. good afternoon. >> caller: thank you for taking my call.

we read your this week to books in the trilogy and been very interested. my father, a member of the 26 infantry was at the surrender, it is kind of interesting, particularly to the forest. >> guest: thanks for your call. john hurley is one of the great soldiers of world war ii. how many silver stars is it? 7 or 8? i read about that extensively. is one of the most appalling bits of combat in world war ii, a terrible generalship by american general's starting with omar bradley and down the line. i have an entire chapter devoted to that. what you find is a very dense, not very big patch of woods not

far from occam on the western edge of germany and the decision is made to throw one division after another into the forest and they are chewed to pieces. i write specifically about the twentieth division. .pullingrm coda, but there were more than five divisions .. it went well for none of them, including the first division, and colonel hurley was there for them. so i write about the forest, and it's not a pretty picture. and, you know, corley is with me in africa. he's with us for the invasion of sicily. i don't write about him a lot, but i sure do admire him. >> host: tom e-mails in: at the beginning of world war ii, mark clark was looked upon as sort of a golden boy. was he as bad a general as he is portrayed now?

>> guest: i don't think he is, and i don't portray him as a bad general. he's the dominant figure in volume two of this trilogy, particularly the second half of it. .. >> he's a bit self-absorbedded, extruer nard ambitious, and he has a thirst for publicity that is beyond belief. what you find when you get to italy where clark is the commander of the fifth army is a

man who cares about the soldiers, who is attentive to the welfare, who is personally brave, unlike some of the stories that have been told about him, and yet is inso board inapt in dealing with the prettyish, and makes decisions indefensible about pressing on to rome, and so i find, personally, that he's a mixed bag. you can see mark clark as somebody who is able to handle 23,000 american battle deaths in italy, not everyone is put on this earth able to handle that kind of pressure. guy who can dh the pressure of heavy casualties. on the other hand, he is a man who has clearly got flaws as a commander. eisenhower begins to see that

clark's compulsiveness about personal vain glory, is something that eisenhower has difficulties with, handling. so, i think my portrait of clark is probably more sympathetic than most. and yet i think he -- you have to see him as a very nuanced character who's got a different facet to his personality and to his generalship. >> host: from the day of battle, regarding the fall of rome, you write: at 6:00 a.m. on tuesday, june 6th,en and aide work mark clack in his suite with the news that german radio had announced the allied invasion of normandy. clark rubbed the sleep from hi eyes, quote, how do you like that. they didn't even let us have the newspaper headlines for the fall of rome. >> guest: you have too be sympathetic. a they had been fighting in

itly, and the next thing you know he captures rome, doesn't do it very gracefully. doesn't permit the british to share in the glory of it and he does disobey orders in going to rome. failing to cut off retreating germans, and yet june 4, 1944, two days later normandy, and italy becomes a back water. >> host: robert, world war 2 veteran, new york city. please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: yes, the question to go to war, hubris was -- the campaign to get abuse the iraq war. did you support going into the war when it was happening? >> guest: does the media have a responsibility? is that the question? and did i support the -- going into iraq, the 2003 invasion? i did not personally. i was with then-major general

david h. petraeus, commander of the 101st airborne division, i was an imbedded reporter, and general petraeus had doubts, as did many others in the military, wondering whether containment had run its course, whether this was the best option, whether it was precipitous. so i had some anxiety about it personally, and i think in retrospect it was fool hardy, frankly. does the media have responsibility? sure, that what the free press is about to ask the most pertinent, most difficult questions related to the national life and no larger issue than war and peace. i think we -- i would include myself -- didn't do particularly well before that 2003 invasion of asking the hard questions about whether in fact there were weapons of mass destruction,

whether saddam hussein had intent to do ill to others. i don't think we did particularly well as an institution, and there's been a lot of soul searching in the ten years since then and that should continue, and i think asking a question like that is entirely appropriate. >> host: in the company of soldiers, a chronicle of combat, came out in 200 about mr. atkinson's experience with imbedding with the 101st army in the iraq war. from "the guns at last light." leonard received an extra allocation of crisis remarkses to commemorate hitler's birthday. a pound of sausage, a half pound of rice and an ounce of coffee. allied planes pummeled the city and citizens risked their lives to cue for the special groceries. quote, with these remarks --

rassions. both stamp and slogan seemed uncommonly ironic for a regime note reported in berlin, and an ss report noted that the demand for poison, a pistol, or other means of ending life, is great everywhere. a pastor shot himself and his wife and daughter. wrote a 16-year-old girl. and mrs. h shot her two sons and herself and slit her daughter's throat. one teacher -- our teacher, mrs. kay, hanged herself. she was a nazi. >> guest: yeah, the final months in berlin and in many german cities had this quality to it with the temples coming down.

they were under incessant bombardsment in berlin. they know the soviet armies are at their door. the know the war is lost. many have suffered personal loss with family members who died in the bombings or soldiers killed, and it's awful. and you can feel sympathy for germans even if you have a disdain for their larger guilt and responsible for the war. >> oo jim is in greenville, south carolina. you're on book tv. >> caller: mr. atkinson, good morning. i read the first two of your trilogy, and i'm reading the third, and i want to thank you for those. i've read a number of books on world war ii, and there seems to be one major american general who seems to be universally ignored as a subject of books best historians of that period. almost to the point of disdain.

he only appears in the narrative of other historians books, and the only book i can remember about him was his own book, "a soldier's story" from the early 1960s, and i'm speaking of omar bradley. after reading your books i think i have an opinion as to why this is so, but you're the historian, and i'd like to know what you think about that. >> host: well, jim, what do you think? whoa why do you think that is? >> caller: i think he seems to be incompetent at some points. i think that he seems to be stuck on the original plan of battle, rather than shifting to -- rather than shifting his strategy as circumstances change. he also seems to be -- this is a

point of character -- but he also comes across as a bit of a prig in the way he handled theodore roosevelt, jr., and -- >> host: all right. thank you. i think we got the point. rick atkinson. >> guest: thanks, jim. i don't think you can think i ignore omar bradley good lord. i've been writing about him for three volumes now. he is certainly -- look in the index. you can see there are many pages devoted to omar bradley. i think your analysis of him is pretty much in line with mine. i believe that you see omar bradley, who is a west point classmate and friend of dwight eisenhower, show up in north africa in the spring of 1943, and he takes over second corps, which patton has briefly commanded, and he does pretty

well at that. he has a knack for it, and he not been in combat before, like eisenhower, he misses world war i combat action. but he is pretty good at it, and then in sicily he commands second corps there again and shares capabilities as a corps commander. the next thing we know, he leaves sicily, goes back to england to prepare for the invasion of normandy, where he commands an army. the major american force in the invasion of normandy, and then he commands an army group, which twice or more armies, the largest armed force that the u.s. army has ever put overseas. i think the is promoted beyond his natural level of competence. used to be called the peter prim and it's hard to not feel also sorry for him. that's a steep learning curve to go from commanding a corps to

commanding an army group in a very short period of time. i think that he, again,es not a natural battle captain. i'm pretty hard in my assessments of him. he wrote two memoirs. you mentioned "a soldier's story." he also wrote a book "a general's life" which was published posthumously. he outlived almost everybody else from that generation and had a large role in shaping his own reputation and shaping the narrative of post war. he was the consultant on the movie, patton, that came out in 1970. and so consequently what you see with omar bradley is the benefit of longevity. he managed to help shape our general belief he was a hero, as a general, and a very competent general.

i don't feel that is entirely accurate, and i certainly write to that effect. >> host: at the end of world war ii, the european theater, rick atkinson write. i. i what churchill called the american prodigy of organization had shipped 18 million tops of war stuff to europe, equivalent of the cargo in 3600 liberty ships or 181,000 rail cars. the kit ranged from hundred thousand military vehicles to foot wear in sizes 2-a to 22ee. u.s. munitions plant turned out 40 billion rounds of small arms ammunition, and 56 million grenades. from d-day to ve day, g.i.'s fired 500 million michigan gun bullets and 23 million artillery rounds. quote. i'm letting the american taxpayer take this hill, one prodigal gunner declared, and no

one disagreed in 1945 the u.s. hat built two-thirds of all ships afloat and was making half of all manufactured goods in the world, including nearly half of all armaments. the enemy was crushed by an economic juggernaut that produced much, muff more of nearly everything that germany could. tom in las vegas, good jana. >> caller: good afternoon, thank you for taking my call. it's a privilege to speak to mr. atkinson. i read the first two volumes and am on the third volume. i was -- i'm retired chaplain for 30 years, '63 to '93, in world war ii i was a boy scout collecting rubber and et cetera for the war effort, and the korean war, i was in the seminary eight years, and defender, -- deferred.

and i felt a responsibility to my country so i went into the chaplainsy. i have a question. there's no mention of chaplains in the first two volumes and i didn't see any in the third volume. i know one chaplain personally who wrote the prayer for patton, the prayer for good weather, i know of a second chaplain who jumped with the 101st, on d-day, was captured, was put up against -- to face the firing squad. the german officer was raised by nuns and -- not raised by educated. he pulled him out of the line, and then that german company was overrun so the chaplain was sent back into -- with his unit. my question, i know you do a lot

of research and a lot of things you have to leave out. did you run across any contribution of chaplains, pro or con, towards the war effort? thank you for taking my call. >> host: thank you, ir. >> guest: thanks for the call and the question. yeah, of course, and i do write about chaplains. i write about they chaplains who wrote the prayer for good weather you mentioned. there's a chaplain, a rabbi, named eichorn, and i write about him in the current back. chaplains are important to combat units then and now. they are part of the morale structure of the army. it's a place for soldiers to find solace of one sort of another, even soldiers who aren't especially religious. chaplains act as counselors and confidantes, and i don't write

about the chaplain corps much because, as you say, there are some things you have to leave out and that is one of the things that does get left out. but i do touch on it and try to knowledge their contribution. >> host: we have just a few minutes left with our guest, and george is a veteran, world war ii, in dearborn heights, michigan. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i'm 87 years old. i was 19 years old when i flew 35 missions with the eighth air force during world war ii. we used to fly over the netherlands, and day in and day out, we'd fly over montgomery's lines and all we would ever see is smoke screens, whereas if we had targets in various parts of germany, sometimes we would have to hit the secondary target

because patton had already got there. and also, i've read a little bit on andy rooney. i haven't heard you mention him. and i've read some of his books, and he had quite a disdain for -- what's the -- the other -- the famous author. anyway. and that's about all. i'd like your comment on what i've just asked. thank you. >> guest: thanks. i don't know if i rev to an -- refer to andy rooney. i read his book, particularly about being a sergeant in world war ii, and i think it's cited in the notes of this one. he is not a character because, again, you got leave certain things out, and just didn't make the cut. 35 missions with eighth air force, that's a pretty

significant contribution. i alluded earlier to the mortality rate of guys flying the kind of missions you were flying, and to make it through 35 missions and get home and live to 2013, to bear witness and tell us about it, is really extraordinary, and i really thank you for that call. >> host: some more facts and figures from rick atkinson's reporting in "pi guns at last light." the provision that traveled with winston churchill when we went to yalta. it included 144 bottles of whiskey, 144 bottles of sherry, 144 bottles of gin 200 pounds of bacon, 200-pounds of coffee, 100 rolled of toy let paper. 2500 paper napkins, 650 dinner plates, 350 tea cups. 500 thank you. leers. 100 wine glasses, and on, 48 bottles of white horse, black and white, and vat 69 whiskeys.

10,000 player cigarettes traveled with him as well. where did you get this information along with the information we read about the end of the war and how many bullets were used, et cetera? >> guest: this information specifically i found at the british national archive outside of london, their equivalent of our national oar archives, and i was delighted to find it. it ifs you some sense how they were living large even in an awful place like yalta. you know, part of the narrative writer's task is to figure out where this stuff is, and then in the case of manifests like this, i show up at the queue and begin looking through files on yalta, and see what i can come up with. >> host: michael, you're on with rick atkinson. >> caller: it's a real pleasure

to meet you by phone for the first time, even though i haven't read any of your books. warfare history is just something i don't care all that much about, but hopefully you can give a good answer to a question that i hope if washington acts fast enough can prevent more wars in the future. it's about the financial and economic underlying causes of war. for instance, in italy, between 1918 and '22 i don't know how mussolini rose to power. i imagine for years he must have wiggled his way up italy's parliament by -- but i dent know if his rise occurred that way. i do know that italy had a low standard of living before 1914 and it was late to the

industrial revolution. >> host: michael, where are you going with this? >> caller: well there are other examples. japan in 1930, after the stock market crash, i read that that's what caused the militarists in japan to rise to power. >> host: we got the point. thank you for your call. did you understand what he was talking about? >> guest: i think the gist of what he is saying is, yeah, there are underlying causes for nations to go to war, and whether they're economic or political or political economic, yes, and if you look at the end of the war in europe in world war 1, you recognize the seeds of world war ii are planted there, and all the rest of european history plays out ultimately. so, yeah, that's indisputable. >> host: kenneth e-mails in, my grandmother born in 1879 had ten, which i boy whose served in europe and in the pacific. i remember pouri her

scrapbooks at the time with fascination and only understand late are how she and other wives were heroes too. how much is the home front covered in your book? >> guest: not a lot. i break away periodically to come back here, for example to the conferences held in washington in may of 1943, and you can take a snapshot been, of what is happening here, but my books are base cliff set overseas in the war theaters -- basically set overseas in the war theaters, and these are combat histories. >> host: next call is scott in georgia. scott, you're on the air. >> caller: yes. i just had a comment and then a question. my comment was, i wanted to say thank you for your work. i was close to my granddad and his younger brother was lieutenant colonel george f.

marshal who i learn about from your first book not african invasion, and this past memorial day, i went with my family to this park dedication in his oh, thrown by his son who was only three at the time. so i just want to say the again for your work, and my question is, i saw among your greatest influences or among your influences was your editor, john sterling, who has been with you all six books. and so what are some of the crucial ingredients for a grate -- greeted did for? >> caller: job has been my editor and good friend since 198 7. i think patience, great literary ear, a sense of how to handle tempermental authors and a recognition these things take time, and that -- friendship is at the heart of that

relationship. >> host: how often did fdr and churchill meet? >> guest: oh, gosh. they met twice, tehran, washington, -- i don't remember the total number of times but hundreds of hours they spent together. >> host: on the phone were they able to talk. >> guest: not often but they did. >> host: three minutes left with our guest. here's a little bit from the "guns at last light." this is from 1945. on fdr. time magazine had catalogued the many rumors about the president's health herb had been secretly rushed to the mayo clinic and three skieses attended him, he was anemic. the truth was worse. nor for decades would it be revealed that this blood pressure climbed from 128 over 82, to 260 over 150 in december 1944. in the past year he had shed

nearly 30-pounds. can't eat, he complained in december; not taste feed. an examination by a cardiologist disclosed the bluish coloringation of his skin, lips and nail bed, with labor bleeding, bouts of stress and symptoms of an enlarged heart and fluid in the lung, all leading to a diagnosis of congestive heart failure. he had been aenemy mick from chronic bleeding hemorrhoids exacerbated by his inability to stand or walk and suffered symptoms of a mild heart attack in august while giving a speech in washington state. he was periodically treated with injections of codeine, and his physician wanted as little as possible be told the roosevelt, and he made efforts to have his daily smoking and drinking to

ten cigarettes and one and a half cocktails as recommended. lots of sleep and still need more. he would write his secretary. that's a little bit from the "the guns at last light." jim in south dakota, your question or comment, please, for rick atkinson. >> host: it helps if i push the button. >> caller: "guns as last light" my first book about world war ii. i'm a joshist in south dakota. timber lake, not trail city. >> host: thank you, sir. >> caller: two years ago when my mother dade died, she had given me a packet of about a thousand letters written between 1942 and 1945 which represent the correspondence of my parents during those years. my father had enlisted in 1942 at the age of 37. he served with the seventh armored division, and my biggest

question today, i've had the letters digitized and now my question is, where do you recommend as a repository for these letters? my father was a very good writer. he never spoke about the war, but his letters are informative, and they're especially insightful when it comes to the training leading up to their tee part -- departure and all of his letters survived. some of his letters when he was in the front, they do not survive. but his do, and he asks a lot of questions in the letters, and i think they are potentially valuable. >> host: thank you, jim. >> guest: thanks for that, jim, and thanks for taking the time to preserve those letters, and there are a couple of good repositories. the first one i would suggest you take a look at is u.s. army

military history institute, which is in pennsylvania, adjacent to the army war college. it is the place where unofficial records -- official records are in the national archives but this is where letters, diaries and the like go, and your dad's trove would fit perfectly in there. among other things they organize their archive by unit. so your dad's letters would be with the seventh armored division and other letters and diaries diaries and so on from the seventh armored division. that sort of stuff, frankly, for historians like me, is absolutely invaluable, and so i would encourage you to put at least copies of them there. they have a pretty good web site, u.s. army military history institute in carlisle, pennsylvania, part of the army history and education center. you can see how to get in touch with them.

>> host: and unfortunately we are out of time with rick atkinson. here's a picture we didn't get to somebody else featured in your books. marlena deitrick. there's a picture offer, and the tuskegee air men are featured in the work and we didn't get a chance to get to either of those. very quickly, mr. atkinson, six bongs, "the long gray line "pot about the west point class of '66. crusade about the persian gulf war, and army of daab in the company of soldiers, the day of battle, and the guns at last light, liberation trilogy, is the web site.